


locks.

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-23 01:24:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2528858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Chasind Hawk-child, his wife, and his children -- and their hair. Memory and honour and love and grief, represented in that scruffy stuff on the tops of their heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	locks.

Their mother’s hair was thick and lustrous, brown, shot with red and, later, shot with grey; a testament to the healthy streak of Rivaini that ran throughout the Amell bloodline. She kept it in a fat braid down her back, or in twin buns tight at the base of her skull.  
Their father’s hair, on the other hand, was as wild as he was — coarse as untreated wool and black as pitch, twisted into medium-thick locks that tumbled over his shoulders and down his back, and sometimes he put small curiosities in it to amuse the children when they were very young, beads or small bells, shards of crystal, leaves from the forest floor.

It was impractical, they knew. A man on the run should not have such distinctive features. A noblewoman used to frequent washings and sweet-smelling oils would not be able to treat her hair the same way on the road. But their hair was their pride, for separate reasons, and so they kept it, and did the best they could. And at night, under the expansive Fereldan sky, Malcolm Hawk-child would curl his body around his wife and curl his fingers into her hair as he cradled her head against his chest, and they’d feel as safe as they could ever feel.

Elijah’s hair took after Malcolm’s, just like most things about him. The elder Hawke began twisting his hair early, with wax that smelled like beehives and summer sun, and Eli grew to love the feel of hands in his hair, a feeling of home that transcended the typical human desire for four walls and a floor.

Carver and Bethany had hybrid-hair — a reddish tumble of wild curls that could scarce be tamed. Malcolm took Carver’s hair in hand the way he’d taken Elijah’s, and Leandra, happy for a girl-child to fuss over, would brush Bethany’s until her hand cramped.

In the Wilds, their hair grew unruly and smelled of brackish water more often than not. Eli let his grow long, and the girl-youth of the village loved it, but he’d let none of them touch it — the privilege fell to a slim and large-eyed boy with mottled skin and bluish veins like a map of Ferelden, instead.

When Malcolm sickened, his hair dulled and shrank and receded from his high, proud forehead.  
When Malcolm sickened, grey bloomed at Leandra’s hairline and spread like the Blight.

After Malcolm’s body was sent downriver, followed by sharp-eyed vultures, heralded by the caw of nightowls and the howling of marsh wolves, Elijah took up the small black-bladed dagger he always kept, and took it to his hair, and when the locks fell away, the tears fell with them.

Leandra found him, wrapped her strong hands around her firstborn’s shorn head, and held him to her breast as if he were still the child she’d carried across the Fereldan hinterlands.

Carver did not understand, and was angry, for he kept the lovingly twisted locks as a memorial to their father, and would snarl at the very thought of cutting them, would spit at the very thought.

And Carver would one day wear warrior’s armour with a rampant griffon emblazoned on the breastplate, and a leather thong would keep his hair out of his face, and when the Blight and age began to eat away at it, he would begin looking towards the Deep Roads, and towards the end.

And one day, in a reclaimed estate in Hightown, a painting rendered by Bethany in deep, rich Chasind inks and encased in a gilt Orlesian frame, would depict a smiling man and his young sons, love in their eyes and the sun in their dark, dark hair.


End file.
